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Creating Creative Writing Prompts

My kids always enjoyed creative writing when we were home schooling. They come by it naturally since I’ve loved writing ever since I could hold a crayon (though I quickly learned that walls weren’t to be used as giant pieces of paper). Thankfully, my kids never had the urge to scribble on our bare white walls. Even when they were very young, all I had to do is hand them a tablet and a pack of crayons, then offer them a creative writing prompt and they were content for hourse. Back then they could only draw stick figures and gibberish, but it was still good practice for when they got older.

When I started officially home schooling, my third and fourth daughters were in 3rd grade, and my youngest was four. At first I would give her different work than I did the older girls, but she’s very competitive and would be in tears if she couldn’t keep up. By the second grade she was doing the same work the older girls were in almost every subject, including creative writing.

Coming up with prompts got to be tricky if I tried to do it on the spot. During a creative moment when my kids were outside playing I took a pack of note cards, a black marker, and a recipe file box, then set out to write down at least 100 creative writing prompts. I figured I could choose one each day and all three girls could write about the same subject, or they could sift through the box and find something that sparked their imagination. Since they could work on their own when writing, it offered me the chance to catch up on some work or just take a break for awhile.

The easiest way to come up with a variety of writing prompts is to think of them in categories. For instance, I thought about fairy tales and came up with suggestions like:

*As a princess, this is what my average day is like.

*I found a magic lamp…

*A big dragon walked up to my castle today…

*I have a rainbow colored horse that flies.

While fantasy writing suggestions were some of my girls’ favorites, I didn’t want them to only focus on magical lives. There were also seasonal prompts to help them think in the near future or recall some of their favorite memories. Examples include:

*The funniest thing that happened last summer was…

*This winter I’d really like to…

*The greatest garden in the world would be…

*During the fall, the most fun I have is when…

I also wanted to get my kids to think deeply about the world in general. Children don’t often think about the fact that there are plenty of negative things happening in the world. Although I didn’t want to depress my kids or cause them stress, I offered some prompts that would allow them to at least think about being proactive when it comes to some of the world’s issues. Some example prompts included:

*This is how I would end world hunger…

*If people keep cutting down trees, our world will…

*The day in the life of a homeless person…

*If I were president, the first thing I would do…

At the end of each school year they had a nice collection of their writing. I saved all of their creative writing notebooks and they would sometimes look back at their work and laugh at some of their ideas, or see how much they had changed or stayed the same in their views.

It’s good to have a wide variety of writing suggestions for your kids to choose from. Create a variety of topics that will jump start their imaginations, then allow them to come up with solutions, or simply ponder an idea. This will give them the chance to explore their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and dreams.